~ NOTE: This post is cross-posted to the game's itch page. If you wanna comment, you can do so there! ~
This is dev diary #2 for my game X-YZE. It talks about the overall design process through the lense of project scope.
X-YZE dev diary #1: Composing X-YZE
Background
X-YZE took 21 months to make, which is 350% longer than expected. After finishing my game within, which took 1 month of after-hours work to make, I wanted to make something a bit bigger and more polished. 6 months was the timeframe I was wanting. For some reason I thought a bump combat action RPG would be a good fit. WRONG!
Until you have a lot of experience with finishing and releasing games, you are extremely likely to underestimate how long it will take to make your game. I've been making games for a while, but most of them have been prototype-y school projects or game jams. Those are great things to make, but their strict deadlines force you to move fast and a bit recklessly. It's a different beast when you're working at your own pace and could theoretially spend as much time as you want on each element of the game.
A hard lesson I learned with X-YZE is that having an accurate sense of project length is hugely important for a wide variety of reasons. The way you approach programming stuff, the amount of time you spend polishing things, the quantity and pace of breaks you take... all of this and more is drastically different when you expect a 6-month project compared to a 2-year project... Many of my scoping decisions came from a place of desperation. Anything I could do to make my life as developer easier. Anything to bring the end more clearly into sight. Anything to make progress.
I strongly believe games need to get smaller. This seems to be a pretty common sentiment nowadays, though I think most people don't go far enough. Consult the sacred text: "How to Make Good Small Games" by John Thyer. To avoid going on too much of a ramble, I'll just give this summarized thought: A game is far better when everything it adds (or repeats) has an important purpose. Embrace some minimalism.
Mechanics
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Story
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Art & Audio
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